reduction

In cooking, sometimes you have to boil a liquid down to its essence, to concentrate and intensify the flavors left in the pan. A reduction, it's called. I was doing this a couple of weeks ago, trying to make a gravy, when it occurred to me that my work-daycare decision is also about boiling something down to its essence. And the essence of the matter was that I don't want Daniel in daycare. So how do we make everything else work around that? When I figured out the basic intention, everything else — whether to go back to work, whether to work from home, whether to try it out and see how daycare goes before making a decision — just sort of fell together. Therefore (went my line of thought): I won't go back to the office. I will stay home with Daniel. We will live on a tighter budget. Whatever I would like to do in the way of work will be accomplished around that. It really became quite simple ... I don't know why it was so agonizing before. (And in case you're wondering, unhelpful guilt-trips such as those left in random comments here on this blog did not factor into my decision.)

Not that staying home with Daniel full-time will always be easy. It can be monumentally hard work at times. I understand why some moms find it mind-numbing. Mind-numbing, but also (at times when I need it most) ridiculously joyful. This morning, I sat at the table in mismatched sweats and slippers, spooning puréed carrots into his mouth and scraping the runoff from his chin, saying "yum yum" and "good boy", and I thought, "Look at me now. I am so far from the nicely dressed professional I was six months ago. I used to spend my days writing articles, researching interesting topics, editing page proofs. I used my strengths, my intelligence, my social skills. I used my college degree. Now I use my sleeve to wipe slobber off mouths, and I consider it normal to go two days without bathing. I have absolutely no training in child development. I hardly recognize myself." And then I looked at Daniel's eager little face waiting for the next spoonful and felt such a wave of love and protectiveness toward this precious, vulnerable little child. This job is important, too — maybe the most important one I will ever have, and I don't want to hand it off to anyone else. (Except maybe Steve sometimes!) Yes, sometimes I don't recognize myself. But I am still here, just learning — new skills, new challenges, new ways of loving and living.

I feel certain that I won't lose that old part of myself, though. (Heck, with the amount of time I spend reading about my latest obsession — vaccines — I come close to feeling like my old self at times!) I will continue to look for ways to preserve my individuality, to protect my passions, to keep my writer's identity honed. In that respect, I am lucky to have the boss that I do; he's willing to let me do some work for the paper from home. Plus, I really do hope to get this freelancing thing going and slowly, eventually build it into a larger business.

Meanwhile, Daniel naps on my lap as I write. He likes to sleep in my lap, and unless I have something else to do, like pump breastmilk or make myself lunch, I don't mind holding him. It's a Friday afternoon, the end of a long, cold week, and we didn't go out into the near-zero temperatures today. I usually go a little stir-crazy if I don't get out of the house, so I've tried to make it a priority, at least most days. Lately, we've been to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where Daniel smiled back at the Buddhas; the Rosedale mall, where I bought a belt to cinch my now-too-big post-partum jeans; and the St. Paul downtown library, where we hung out in the warm magazine room with the homeless people, and I paged through old issues of Vogue and the Utne Reader. It felt like a luxury.